Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet feeding apparatus for feeding sheets and an image forming apparatus including the sheet feeding apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a sheet feeding apparatus including a sloping-surface member has been proposed, as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2016-052950. The sloping-surface member separates a sheet, one by one, from sheets fed by a sheet feeding roller. The sloping-surface member has a sloping surface which is obtuse with respect to a sheet feeding tray on which sheets are stacked. Sheets fed by the sheet feeding roller are separated into one sheet from the other while passing the sloping surface. The sloping-surface member has an opening, from which an abutment member protrudes. When sheets are inserted into the sheet feeding tray, the leading edge of the sheets abuts against the abutment member positioned at a protruding position. Thus, the sheets are set at a proper set position.
The abutment member is urged by a spring member toward a retracting position. The retracting position is a position to which the abutment member is retracted from the sloping surface. When the abutment member is pushed by a cam member against the urging force of the spring member, the abutment member is positioned at the protruding position. The cam member is driven by a motor. That is, the abutment member can be moved to the protruding position or the retracting position by the motor that drives the cam member in a forward direction or a reverse direction.
The sheet feeding apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2016-052950 controls the cam member, in a job to continuously form an image on a plurality of sheets, so that the abutment member is positioned at the retracting position at the beginning of the job, and at the protruding position at the end of the job. However, when a sheet is leaning on the sloping surface during the job, the sheet feeding apparatus fails to push back the sheet, and may cause failure of the feeding.